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Beannie and the Bug


Taun

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Beannie and the Bug

(A True Story)

In 1973 my (then) wife and I lived just outside of Tokyo, Japan. We had a nice small frame house located in a wooded

corner of a major Army Bases housing area and we loved it.

Sharon (my wife) loved cats. She loved cats more than she loved anything else (me included as it turned out), and it wasn’t long after we settled

in that she adopted a totally white, stray Manx type cat (short stubby tail). She couldn’t decide on a name for him, being torn

between “Snowflake” and “Spookie” , but one afternoon he got up on the table as she was preparing some bean dip for a party,

and ate it all… So she named him “Beannie”…

Beannie had one habit that I did not care for, he liked to find large bugs in the yard and bring them into the house, where he would

play with them for a while, then get bored and walk off leaving the critter to roam as it pleased. Usually he brought in things like large

slugs, snails and beetles, and since Sharon hated bugs she would soon be calling for me to get rid of the slimy things (yeah, like I wanted

to touch them… yech!) . But one hot, humid afternoon, he made a tragic mistake… Beannie brought in the largest Preying Mantis I have

ever seen!

He deposited the mantis in the middle of the kitchen floor and started walking around it, batting at it occasionally with a paw. The mantis just

stood there, staring at the large cat, it’s head swiveling completely around to always face it’s tormentor.

I was sitting in an arm chair – my leg in a cast from a severe sprain I had received the day before- watching this, waiting for the cat to tire of his game,

so I could escort the mantis outside.

Well, a mantis has little or no sense of humor, and after about the third time that Beannie had circled it and had gotten back to the front, the mantis

suddenly leapt at the cat with blinding speed! It’s wings buzzing rapidly as it grabbed Beannies whiskers on either side of the startled cats muzzle,

and proceeded to start eating Beannies nose!.

The cat let out the strangest yowl I have ever heard a cat make, and started violently shaking his head from side to side as he also began running pell-mell

through the house. Unable to see where he was going, due to the huge insect eating his face, Beannie caromed off of every piece of furniture in the house

as he attempted to free himself from the mantis. I knew better than to try to intervene as the cat was not declawed, didn't like me much to begin with and I couldn't really move

all that well.

Meanwhile, Sharon – who was in the shower – heard “her baby” screaming and the crashing of furniture and her many “niknaks”, so she quickly wrapped a

towel around her long hair, then ran out to see what was going on.

In the brief time all this took, the cat had largely wrecked the living room, all the while the mantis was chowing down on his – now bleeding – nose. Screaming

Sharon grabbed a nearby straw broom and began chasing after the struggling duo, whacking the cat on its back and head, as she tried to kill the (apparently)

very hungry insect.

This did not set well with Beannie, who was now being attacked at both ends! As the terrified cat ran even screamed even louder and ran faster with even more

seriously depleted navigational skills, he started voiding both his bladder and his colon…

Around and around they ran, for another 5 or 6 minutes, until finally Sharon slipped on the Pee and Poo mess Beannie was leaving behind him, and fell – sliding into the cat.

This caused the whiskers that the mantis was holding onto to break off and the insect, gracefully fluttered off to land atop the bookshelf in the spare room that we

used for storage. Sharon, apparently, took umbrage with my hysterical laughter, and began whacking me with the broom… It didn’t really hurt, and (truth to tell) I

probably deserved it… a bit…

At long last, she was able to get near her absolutely freaked out cat, and start calming him down. The cleanup took quite a while, and was accompanied by an

occasional whack on my back with the broom as I continued to laugh about it…

We never found the Preying Mantis, but in a couple weeks it became apparent that it was female, as the egg cluster it must have laid hatched and we were inundated

with hundreds of tiny Preying Mantis babies… It took a long time to get them out of the house, but I made sure that at least one remained indoors – since the National

Bird of Japan seemed to be the mosquito… We never had problems with mosquito's after this, so to me it was worth it.

For the rest of his life, Beannie had a notch in the tip of his nose, where the Preying Mantis had feasted… But he never brought another bug into the house again!

3 Comments


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LOL LOL! Oh, man, I can picture that! Fortunately it was '73 it would have gone viral! Just kidding, know you wouldn't...

Poor kitty! But preying mantis are def awesome insects, but cat fighter was one I was not familiar with, lol.

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Filming it would have been a HUGE "no go"... My wife had just gotten out of the shower, and except for a towel around her hair was nekkid... (and she was not happy about her weight)...

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